Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
The corps is inured to this ideological Esperanto, but it is vertiginous and risible when you first hear it live -- compared to human conversation, it sounds absurd. I discussed the "defeating ideology" statement later with defense analyst "Dr. Suave," who clarified: "It's postmodern language. It's abstract. It means absolutely nothing. There's no content there."
My first revelation: Nobody in the room asks questions like "How does one militarily defeat an ideology, short of killing everyone who feels that way and their families, then destroying all writings ever produced about that ideology, and disappearing any scholars who've ever had a passing interest in it?" And/or "Has the president noticed that historically, ideologies usually persist, despite genocide and other disincentives?"
That's not how questions are asked in the briefing room. How it's done is far more complicated, Byzantine and ineffectual.
The Biggest Boy with the Cleanest Game, when I was there, was usually Terry Hunt of the AP, who has the kind of small, wiry gravity that should be played by Bob Balaban in the fantasy biopic. Hunt's game style in the room seems to be a daily practice of publicly outclassing McClellan -- but it's easy to sound smarter and more worthy of love than your adversary when you are using the spontaneous, active language centers of your brain to communicate, as opposed to being limited to doling out cold sound bites from an undersize professional memory thermos. On the 13th, Hunt asked McClellan why the president hadn't given a "warm endorsement" to Karl Rove when asked about him earlier that day. McClellan responded that the president "wasn't asked about his support or confidence for Karl."
HUNT: Well, the president has never been restrained at staying right in the lines of a question, as you know. [Laughter.] He kind of -- he says whatever he wants. And if he had wanted to express confidence in Karl Rove, he could have. Why didn't he?
McCLELLAN: He expressed it yesterday through me, and I just expressed it again.
Q. Well, why doesn't he? [Hunt said this in almost a whine.]
Q. But, Scott, he defended Al Gonzales without even being asked --
(And there was a laugh there, which isn't in the official transcript. I also didn't hear the word "defended" -- I heard "befriended." This was a reference to Bush's comment regarding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, of whom he said, "I'm loyal to my friends.")
The dynamic felt vacuous, frustrated and unhealthy. McClellan infantalizes the press corps -- apart from token gestures of professional camaraderie and assertions of respect (he tells them he respects them a lot, he returns their phone calls after 7 p.m., and is friendly to everyone at the annual Christmas parties), the corps are not trusted or treated like adults, and they passively accept this. McClellan's operative personality is a patronizing hybrid of nursery school teacher and Hal the supercomputer from "2001: A Space Odyssey"; his tone suggests your persistence in asking these awful questions means that you are crabby and need a nap. If somebody gets too excited and badgers McClellan for clarity, they are shut down with a withering blast of Daddy/Authority-speak, the subtext of which is always the same: Your question is so appalling and immature that I cannot possibly dignify it with a response. You should be very ashamed of yourself. I suggest you lie down and forget about this Dave. Beep. Dave. Beep.
There is another powerful disincentive to ask too many uncomfortable questions: Security passes to the briefing room have been known to become elusive at times, as Maureen Dowd discovered at the beginning of the Bush administration. Reporters are also frozen out by never getting called on. Staying an Insider in Good Standing is a much more demanding gig than getting in. There have been many bodies buried outside the security gate. Banishment from the corps means exile, and unless the reporter wants to give up and sell Amway products, it's a slow, painful crawl back to the inside. The function of the press may be to harass McClellan for information, but everyone is tensely aware that you can pull the Big Dog's ears only so long and keep the seat of your pants intact.
The seat to Hunt's left, the weeks I was there, was usually filled by NBC's David Gregory, whose big soft face belies his real exasperation with the status quo and a lust for confrontation. He was, by far, the most aggressive man in front, who got the most blood on the walls in the scraps with McClellan. Unlike any other journalist in the room, Gregory and McClellan seem to have a personal grudge match that would make them capable of storming out to the parking lot and taking swings at each other. Gregory is a good nemesis for McClellan -- they seem to be the same weight class, on many levels.
GREGORY: Scott ... to make a general observation here, in a previous administration, if a press secretary had given the sort of answers you've just given ... Republicans would have hammered them as having a kind of legalistic and sleazy defense. I mean, the reality is that you're parsing words, and you've been doing it for a few days now. So does the president think Karl Rove did something wrong, or doesn't he?
McCLELLAN: No, David, I'm not at all. I told you and the president told you earlier today that we don't want to prejudge the outcome of an ongoing investigation. And I think we've been round and round on this for two days now...
GREGORY: ... When you're dealing with a covert operative ... a senior official of the government should be darn well sure that that person is not undercover, is not covert, before speaking about them in any way, shape or form. Does the president agree with that or not?
McCLELLAN: Again, we've been round and round on this for a couple of days now. I don't have anything to add to what I've said the previous two days.
GREGORY: That's a different question, and it's not round and round --
McCLELLAN: You heard from the president earlier.
GREGORY: It has nothing to do with the investigation, Scott, and you know it.
McCLELLAN: You heard from the president earlier today, and the president said he's not --
[Pitch, volume and tempo are rising...]
GREGORY: That's a dodge to my question. It has nothing to do with the investigation. Is it appropriate for a senior official to speak about a covert agent in any way, shape or form without first finding out whether that person is working as a covert officer?
McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, you're wrong. This is all relating to questions about an ongoing investigation, and I've been through this.
GREGORY: If I wanted to ask you about an ongoing investigation, I would ask you about the statute, and I'm not doing that. [Very exasperated.]
McCLELLAN: I think we've exhausted discussion on this the last couple of days.
GREGORY: You haven't even scratched the surface.
Q. It hasn't started.
It was ugly, but a lot like a Wimbledon match. There was sweat and grunting -- everyone was playing as hard and aggressively as they could, but overall, it was awfully sportsmanly and polite. None of it was ever personal -- a dysfunctional family that argues in public, but is conspicuously all in there together -- the room shook hands with Scott over the net afterward.
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